Ryan Braun is suspended for the rest of the year, which means a 65 game suspension. Those 65 games will cost him about $3.5 million.

It’s an absolute steal for Braun, methinks.

Partially because of what he could have faced. If you believe the reports which have flown hither and tither for the past few weeks, Major League Baseball was bound to bring the hammer down on Braun. Maybe 100 games! Maybe life! I doubt it actually would have come to that, and if it did, Braun could have fought hard against it, even if it was only to try to force some compromise. But now he doesn’t do that and Major League Baseball gets a pretty big head on a pretty tall pike.

Why didn’t he do that? Probably because the league had him dead to rights. But there are two other reasons why this works out as the best case scenario in what is overall a bad situation for the former NL MVP.

First, it’s a nice time for a break. Braun’s season has been riddled with injuries and the Brewers season has turned into a pretty depressing slog. The team wasn’t going to do anything this year and Braun was going to probably have nagging injuries which would keep him from doing anything to cut out and put in the personal scrapbook. Now, with his suspension limited to one season, he can get healthy, take the winter off and come back fresh in spring training 2014. It’s a win for him in that narrow regard and a win for Brewers fans who don’t have to face parts of multiple seasons without their best players.

Financially, though, now is the time for Braun to take his medicine. People may not realize it, but Braun is a pretty low-paid superstar at the moment. His 2013 salary: about $10 million. That’s part of a structured long term extension he signed in 2011 which has things really starting to escalate from 2016 through 2020, when he’ll make around $19 million. Sixty-five games at his rate right now is way better than 50 games — or less — next year.

Obviously this is not any sort of actual win for Braun. He’s suspended and his name is Mudd for the rest of his career. But he’ll be back to being a regular baseball player next season. And a highly paid one at that.

The Cardinals have always emphasized building from within. In the 2016-17 offseason, however, they may end up being one of the bigger free agent buyers. At least according to some informed speculation.

The Cardinals are already losing their first round pick due to the Fowler signing, so any other top free agent won’t cost them more than the money he’s owed. And as far as money goes, the Cardinals have a great deal of it, despite being a small market team. They have a billion dollar TV deal coming online and Matt Holliday and Jaime Garcia are off the payroll now. Spending big on a free agent or three would not cripple them or anything.

Encarnacion or Trumbo would be first baseman, which wold fly in the face of the Cards’ move of Matt Carpenter to first base (and, at least as far as Encarnacion goes, would fly in the face of good defense). Getting either of them would push Carpenter back to second, displacing Kolten Wong, or over to third, displacing Jhonny Peralta. If you’re going to do that, I’d say that Turner would make more sense, but what do I know?

Either way, the Cardinals may be entering a pretty interesting phase of their offseason now. And an unfamiliar one as, quite possibly, the top free agent buyer on the market.

There is literally nothing you could tell me that the incoming administration is considering which would shock me anymore. As such, I saw this story when I woke up this morning, blinked once, took a sip of coffee, closed the browser window and just went on with my morning, as desensitized as a wisdom tooth about to be yanked.

Rob Bradford of WEEI.com reports that Former Red Sox, Mets and Rangers manager Bobby Valentine is on a short-list of candidates for the job of United States Ambassador to Japan:

The 66-year-old, who currently serves as Sacred Heart University’s athletics director, has engaged in preliminary discussions with President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team regarding the position.

Valentine managed the Chiba Lotte Marines of Japan’s Pacific League for six seasons, leading the team to a championship in 2005. He also knows the current prime minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, as both went to USC. Assuming championship teams meet the country’s leader in Japan like they do in the United States, Valentine has at least twice the amount of experience with top political leaders than does, say, Ned Yost, so that’s something.

The former manager, more importantly, is friends with Donald Trump’s brother, with the two of them going way back. Which, given how this transition is going, seems like a far more important set of qualifications than anything else on this list.